Diver resurfaced

Senkar survived the fall. It was a short way down into the lake, but he had both the quick reaction and the wisdom to twist in the air and hit the surface heel first. True to his current job description he submerged in the water but his luggage stalled the dive. He immediately unclasped the large backpack and rose to the surface. Thanks to his enhanced physique that he would never have in the real world, he managed to swim all the way to the shore he saw maybe a kilometer away while pulling the large backpack behind him, his spear, shortbow, and fastened shut arrow quiver fortunately still strapped onto it. It took him a while, and eventually he crashed down on the grassy and pebbly bank, gasping for breath, resting his aching arms and legs. Relief overcame him. Even this body had its limits, which he now tested and survived; limits he probably could push much further one day if he made the effort to actually go raise his level, even now. The difference between a game and life had become blurry, but it was already known that leveling up was still a thing. If I survive this whole trip, surely there will be experience gained. Surely…?

If not, maybe I will at least be as cool as Koori or Tycho. Or Oneiron.

He spat water noting it was not salty then dropped face down on the ground. After a moment he rolled his body to lay on the back. The sun dried his clothes and warmed his face pleasantly, which told him it must have been afternoon. It was really high in the sky. Which was strange, because he entered the portal at dawn. Where did all those hours go? Or was it more than that?

Still resting on his back with his eyes still closed, he reached up to his face and rubbed his chin. Still smooth, he thought, so it’s been less than a day. He resumed resting while processing the newest experience. I narrowly avoided death there, he thought, and only now allowed himself to shudder. Had it been somewhere further from the coast then not even a Player would avoid drowning eventually. Had it been in a colder climate, he would eventually freeze to death.

Training paid off immediately, he thought. So what did I learn? I’m alive, for starters. The Rockbase people looking into the topic, such as they were, did not really know if the dimensional tears are really portals, and if they lead anywhere. The warnings that they may throw a traveler into a wall, ocean bottom, or something equally deadly were dismissed by some, pointing out that the dimensional tears can not be stable and persistent if they are disrupted on the other end. Therefore they had to connect to somewhere relatively safe. This was, of course, pure speculation on their part.

Another speculation was that coming into contact with one of them would just tear a living being apart. They tested it by throwing meat at them but they had no way to know what emerged on the other side. The observation that he was, after all, alive, was significant and very welcome. There will be no respawning today, he assured himself. He promised himself.

He wordlessly praised whoever decided that a few key pieces of his inventory must be waterproof, such as some of the food, the firestarting kit, and a tube with a very precious scroll inside. The wax seal was still intact. He sat up and looked in the direction he came from, wiping the water from his mouth. There was no sign of anything resembling a magical vortex on the lake surface or above it. Either it was somehow invisible in the current conditions, or it had vanished. He relaxed a little, laying back down on the shore. I’m not coming back this way, then. Good. I didn’t want to.

Then again he snapped back to attention. Frakk! Monsters! he reminded himself. For all he knew, he could be among high-level monsters, far above his power to defeat. If necessary, I will just go back to the water and swim along the shore. He prepared an emergency exit plan as he jumped to his feet, but upon quick examination of his surroundings he noticed exactly zero imposing creatures in any direction.

‘Lucky this time,’ he said to himself. He chastised himself for momentary laxity and inattention that could have cost him an unacceptable setback.

---

An hour or two later, when the sun was nearing the horizon, he was on top of a nearby hill. His plan for the time being was to get everything dry, so he decided to strike a camp first. He opened his bags, removed the stack of blank parchments and sticks of charcoal, and laid them out to dry by the last rays of the sun and by the fire he was about to start. The setting sun was not an issue. He needed the night too.

‘It’s probably going to curl in the process, but I have no idea how to prevent it,’ he announced to the papers. The papers did not comment on the issue.

His kit included the most basic cooking utensils - a pan, a knife, and a spoon. That was the traveler’s mandatory minimum, anything after that was unnecessary weight - at least, this is what a military man back at Rockbase told them. However, Senkar was not going to cook for now, so instead he helped himself to some of the smoked meat that had been wrapped in paper once. It tasted of lakewater, but that was fine. It had to be eaten as one of his first meals.

Some pine, some leafy. A temperate climate then, he remarked by looking at the trees around him. They looked normal, but there were unknown flowers in the undergrowth. The air was less humid than on the peninsula that Sorostade was on, but something hanged in it that made him nauseous, especially during the trek from lake to the hill. He continued thinking. Trees are tall and spread branches wide. For this, they need deep roots or else they fall over. Therefore, the soil is deep, which means this surface is not young by geological standards. It takes millenia for a freshly revealed surface to be covered in soil. I have information, now to make it wisdom. What does that data mean to me? Does this help me navigate back to Rockbase, or find another Player group if it exists? No.

The place was good for his first camp. He left his belongings and the firewood he had collected along the way, though he had not started a fire. Not many thieves around here, I suspect. Making the best of the last light of the day, he went down for a short walk around the hill to perhaps spot a monster or an animal. He continued to think.

If this world is a computer simulation and our minds are plugged in, like Esther proposed, then it was made by humans. There is no other explanation why everything we see looks like Earth, except for the presence of monsters and magic, and the overall low technology level. Did the designers of the simulation do so much research as to simulate geological layers under my feet? No game designer in the right mind would do that. We can start digging and see what we find - or see if we are prevented from doing this by some invisible force, like a game would.

Ah, if only I chose to study something less useful than medicine, like botany or astronomy, then I would be laughing now. But nooooo. Who needs a doctor in a world with healing magic?!

I wonder if healing magic can treat cancer or Hestia’s ‘patients’. Surely someone tried? I didn’t actually ask when I had the chance. I guess Hestia tried it.

---

I could use an astronomer right now, Senkar thought.

The night came and with it came some answers. He climbed a tree to get a better view. Seeing the horizon line was rather important for stellar observations. He had no telescope or anything like that, but it was not required for his purposes. A sextant would be more useful, if anything. After a minute or two he found a particular star he was looking for, one of the brightest and one of the first to show up after sunset. He scanned left and down, and surely enough, found the constellation that the smart people back at “home” nicknamed Beholder. Why that name? people asked. It looks nothing like a Beholder. There was no good reason why, and in that it was just like the nomenclature of constellations back on Earth. Tradition has been upkept.

The discovery that this world had different stars was itself a huge discovery… for those who cared. Most people did not even notice. They can’t be blamed, Senkar thought. Most people live in cities where light pollution doesn’t let them see stars at all. So, they learned not to look at them.

The Beholder was higher in the sky than Senkar was used to seeing at this time of night. Therefore, the conclusion was simple, even if not very precise: I was dropped way, way north. Maybe two hundred kilometers. Probably not three. Therefore, I go south from here. Latitude: check. Longitude? Haha, good luck. The best human minds couldn’t figure this one out for centuries until the late 1700s - if I remember correctly - when a proper clock was invented in Britain.

Sigh. I wonder what else could a smarter person than me learn from this sky.